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Multiple Language Websites
From Jimdo Help
Creating a Multilingual JimdoPage
(Editor's note: this is the first in a two-part series on setting up a multilingual website with Jimdo. This section shows you the basic method of making a JimdoPage in two languages. In the second part, we'll show you how to create an advanced, fully multilingual website, with a multilingual blog, store and guestbook.)
There are plenty of reasons you might want to create a website in more than one language: a Canadian site in both French and English, a community website in Spanish and English, or even a multilingual website for your company.
Jimdo makes it easy to go bilingual (or even polyglot). Start with a new JimdoPage and choose a layout that works – best is one that separates the main navigation from second-level navigation. Two great Pro layouts for bilingual websites are P1304 and P544, but there are plenty of others that work well, too.
It might be obvious to you, it might not, but if you want to create a website in two languages you have to create content in two languages, or get someone to translate it for you. Just because you create a multilingual website doesn’t mean it will translate your content for you. So first create your content in both (or all) languages!
Before you add any content to the new site, it's important to first prepare an outline or skeleton of your site for each of the languages. This will help keeps things organized as you switch between languages. One suggestion before you get going: take your time and get your site structure straight before you start adding content. The more clearly you organize content now, the easier it will be to edit in other languages. It will also be easier for visitors to your website to find their way around.
In this example, we're creating a site in English and Spanish. So we create one page for English and one for Spanish.
Each language page we ‘add’ in this way shows up as a button in the upper left of our JimdoPage. When we click on Español, we’re actually switching from the English version of our website to the Spanish version. Once we’ve gotten this far, we can start adding headings in each language.
In our example, we chose three navigation pages: in English, “About Us”, “Store”, and “Contact” and in Spanish "Nosotros", "Tienda" and "Contacto". To add a new navigation option, just click on the “+” symbol. Then we give the heading a name and click on the side arrow “->” to create a second-level navigation button.
You can also create third-level navigation buttons – if you want to add several pages of pictures to your “About Us” page, for example, or for individual product pages in your Store. Right now, though, our website looks fairly empty:
Now we’re ready to add content – in all languages. In part two of this tutorial, we’ll learn how to integrate advanced functions – such as a multilingual shop, guestbook, and more - into a multilingual Jimdo website.
In the meantime, check out the two basic sample multilingual sites we created, click around and see how things are done:
http://bilingualsite.jimdo.com/
http://zweisprachen.jimdo.com/english/
And here’s one particularly well-designed multilingual JimdoPage (watch out - you need solid HTML and CSS skills to make a website look like this!):
- This page was last modified on 23 June 2011, at 19:06.
- This page has been accessed 5,403 times.
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